Toy Fair 2013: Hasbro Star Wars Black Series (6-inch)

I couldn’t rightly go to sleep tonight without posting about the recently announced Star Wars Black Series. With their announcement of the new 6-inch line, Hasbro had highlighted one of the figures in the first wave of four – the X-Wing Luke Skywalker. The Star Wars team spent some time talking about the genesis of the line – they wanted to create a line of figures that recalled specific scenes from the movies – ones that would be iconic and instantly recognizable to fans. For Luke, that meant poring over tons of reference and agonizing over details as specific as clothing folds.

That attention to detail, with partner Gentle Giant, as paid off, as Hasbro showed off the rest of the first wave – R2-D2, the Sand Trooper, and Darth Maul – and teased the inevitable San Diego Comic-Con exclusive.

I’m not a fan of the lighting Hasbro chose for their display. The lighting from below creates awkward shadows on head sculpts and makes it pretty difficult to capture details in the sculpts. I think this is manifested mostly on Darth Maul, who looked a little awkward with the off-angle action pose. But getting to look at it in person and from multiple angles, I am hopeful the figure will turn out great in production. He looks especially menacing with the swap-out hooded head.

Some people were wondering what they would do to make R2 a $20 figure. He’s got those jetpacks that will send the Prequel Trilogy haters into fits – but he comes with a lot of removable and interchangeable parts, to recreate a lot of the different configurations he had while doing his astromech repair thing.

The star of the show for me, though, was the Sand Trooper. Now, I’m not the kind of Star Wars aficionado that can tell you the difference the various Sand Troopers, or even what’s different between a Sand Trooper and a Storm Trooper besides that shoulder pauldron. But I do know that the figure looks like it popped off the movie screen to me – so it’s a winner.

As for the San Diego Comic-Con exclusive, I saw a brief glimpse of someone frozen in carbonite, thus cementing in most people’s minds that the fan favorite Boba Fett would be the draw for SDCC. People were guessing that he’d appear in either his Empire Strikes Back or his Return of the Jedi looks for the exclusive and the other one for his inevitable release at retail. It looks like SDCC will get the ESB look with a Han Solo in carbonite accessory. Don’t fret, non-con-goers. All the Hasbro exclusives make their way to HasbroToyShop.com – just don’t wait around too long, lest you miss out like many did on the Uncanny X-Force 3-pack from last year.

If any figures from Wave 2 were announced, I missed it while ogling these figures. Do tell if you know something! I’ll be trying to use the Force to make August (actually July, now that a con exclusive is confirmed) come around that much sooner.